Help our Family Recover from the Fire

Dear Friends and Kind Donors, Our family recently lost our sweet home and everything we own in the River Fire in Grass Valley (Chicago Park neighborhood). We were so happy to buy and move into our first home exactly a year before the fire started up in the nearby Bear River Campground and swept across the canyon to engulf our beloved adobe home which looked out over the hills. So many sweet memories and every item of clothing, bedding, bath, furniture, kitchen /dining, favorite toys, books, family treasures, photos, precious guitars and piano, original art and art supplies, wedding gifts, and supplies needed for our professional livelihoods were engulfed in flames. We had no time to bring anything but our important documents and computers. Thankfully the three of us and our pets are safe. [Update: 2 or our pets are safe. Sadly our kitty was lost from her foster home.]

I am writing this because, after numerous attempts to create a GoFundMe for our family, our friends were coming up with technical difficulties getting the fund started, and we have been asked many times to share a GoFundMe page with friends and local charity workers doing grass roots efforts to help people in crisis. I have never been in such a devastating crisis, but we have literally lost everything we own and have been violently uprooted. We are slowly working to pick up the pieces and do the work of finding a new home while completing  the daunting amount of paperwork needed to recover, not to mention the work of cleaning debris and reconstructing a home from scratch.

Our 6 year old daughter sums it up when she says, “I keep feeling like I’m going to wake up in my bed, and find out this was a dream.” 

Angels have been appearing everywhere from the start, guiding us along the way, and there is always a bright side to look on, but we could certainly use all the help we can get. There has been such an outpouring of love and offers to provide clothing and another necessities and foster care for our pets, etc. 

As our friends wrote in their original draft of this GoFundMe story: “No amount of money can fully replace what they have lost and it will take them time to rebuild their lives and put all of the pieces back together. Please share this campaign with your networks far and wide and let’s help them feel the love, support and peace they need during these extremely challenging times.”

We have been so grateful and our hearts are warmed. This GoFundMe will help us handle the day to day financial requirements of starting to build all over from scratch.  Thank you so very much!